#321

Taking two psychology courses at once right now, with a lot of overlap--they are both developmental psychology courses at the same level, so there's certain ground they both need to cover. Doing both at once is pretty good for my retention and retrieval, or at any rate, that can be hoped for. All this by way of saying that frankly, I know--deep in my bones--Freud was lying through gritted teeth when he said he's never read Nietzsche. Come the fuck on, man. I don't know how anyone can buy that. 

As for the behaviorists, it baffles me how men can take individual credit just for proving in a lab what their fathers obviously taught them with a belt. Imagine standing up and saying in all possible gravity "I have proved that an animal can be trained, and children taught. It may be argued that animals have been trained and children taught for eight thousand years, but it has not been true until just now, when I said that I proved it. Did you know, sir, that your behavior can be changed in order to...avoid pain? I have personally invented a novel technique."

Shit, I wonder what startling insight I can come up with that nobody ever knew anything about ever. Maybe I can shatter the very foundations of the scientific community by asserting that indeed, the mathematical implications of integer arithmetic have real-world applications in practical fields such as international trade, computer architecture, and countless others. It's an exciting time.

It's true that while we're alive, and the other people around us are alive, and everyone that came before us is dead and gone to dust in the ground, we are doomed to rehash a lot of the same shit with a modern spin. You see it all the time, and it's just how things go. Suppose in general the sophistication of it all generally increases. Anyhow the jargon does. 

Myself, I've never written anything new in my life--it is a great accomplishment merely to sound like myself, which is as much if not more a product of my culture and the influence of my models as it is a fruit of my labor and ingenuity.

So, well, perhaps I'm thinking about it too snark-style. When you're wearing shiny shoes and a fancy suit, standing in a laboratory with flunkies at your beck and call and a state apparatus very interested in what you can tell them about controlling people's thoughts and actions at your back, perhaps it's inevitable to feel like proving your basic-ass idea needs to involve wholly needless torture because it will be worth more than what shepherds and dogs have accomplished together since time immemorial. 

*

Yo, I hate the fucking autofill shit in this browser! I'm here to type, shitfucker! Don't try to rob me of typing! You think I got somewhere else to be? Damn!

*

Ezra made some pottery, a bunch of pottery really, in a class he took last semester. I like drinking coffee out of a couple of the pieces, and couple more are on the shelves in my bookroom, very much gracing them. This reminds me that I've been meaning to tumble some of my rock collection and I haven't yet. Perhaps I'll wait till the spring, though. 

--JL

#320

Hey! New computer. Typing has slowed considerably for the nonce, but the keyboard is...luxurious. I'm luxuriating. Feeling pretty fucking luxuriated. Luxuriant. Nothing so grand as a custom clicky-clacky or one of those, I dunno, two hundred-and-fifty-dollar jobs you can buy, but for the keyboard that comes integrated into a laptop, at these prices, there is a deal of pleasure. 

Indeed, my old Toshiba finally broke, pretty bad, I think. All the way, probably. Is it pretty bad and an all the way break when the computer consistently fails to find a bootable disc? It seems bad, when that is happening, and restarts are no avail. Cracked it open to look at its guts and everything but couldn't find the problem. Originally, my plan was to continue to try and fix it, perhaps getting used to the idea of using the computer lab at the community college a lot more than I would prefer, but when I mentioned it to my parents they ordered me this laptop (a Dell Inspiron, as befits a house of noble rank) on the spot. They seem pleased that I've returned to school. I may have to get a master's degree.

*

Haven't talked about the world and its affairs in a little bit. I'll do a bit of dabble.

Number one: don't like the idea of this trillion-dollar coin. It's not that it wouldn't work, technically; it's that it would work in a stupid way and do a lot of damage, not the least of which would be making us look like a bunch of fucking assholes. My opinion, minting that coin is admitting, once and for all, that we as a nation are ready for someone else to take the wheel. We need to scratch our butts and be on our phone in the backseat for a few hours. Nap might hit the spot. And this would be ok, except the domestic implications would be considerably worse, which combined with reduced global standing usually means a spiraling effect. 

Well, maybe that's the long game with the Ukrainian invasion and Russian plants all over the government. Fuck up economies so bad California and Texas finally secede and a bunch of land has to get sold to corporations or NGO's or even foreign governments on top of that. I for one have never stopped thinking about certain papers detailing soft power tactics and their strategic implications, many of which have borne fruit long since ripened and picked.

Number two: there's no number two. Gone and bummed myself out. This is why I don't do this kind of thing very often. It's not that the big picture affects me emotionally; it saddens me on a personal level that people are so manipulable as to let this happen. This isn't tanks advancing on your condo complex; what the fuck you gonna do, you know? This is literally letting yourself get gamed into opening the door to the man with the rifle and thanking him for the privilege. This is letting yourself be cozened into thinking that sitting on your ass and tweeting about nothing is the same as a revolution, the really good one this time. 

Yeah. Who cares, though? Ultimately, things are what they are, eventually fail, and make way for the new. Plus, I haven't had any coffee yet. Probably I'm being ridiculous and everything will come up roses. We are in the palm of God's hand, after all. Greatest country on the planet, hoo-rah. Which reminds me, hope a big chunk of all this gets carved out for First Nations when it all comes crashing down and subdivides.

*

Dang, gotta do better than that for the first post on the new machine! Let's see, what's good? What's fun?

Several nights ago I dreamed about my ex-fiancée for the first time since we stopped being in each other's lives. Over the years I have many times thought it strange that I never once dreamed about her, and then that night, bam. One dream followed the next; intense, vivid, huge dreams, with dense plots and extremely realized settings. I would wake up from one, go back to sleep, and enter the next, and she would be there. 

Returning to school has proven to be a kind of revelation, psychologically; what once was so hard for me on a personal level is now easier and more straightforward than a walk in an extremely basic, flat, one-path park, and I'm laughing about it. Certainly this has brought about much reflection on who I used to be, what my hangups were, and how I have come to grow out of them and heal. As one breakthrough tends to set off another and this kind of processing can unlock stuff, on the balance it shouldn't surprise me that I dreamed of her as if making up for lost time. 

On the day that I woke up from those dreams, I went on a small adventure to see if I could reconnect with certain parental elements from halcyon days gone by. Encountered only marginal success, but it was a positive experience, nonetheless. Got me out of the house, anyway. Be trying again on different fronts soon. It's a new decade, both in lived time and the days of the world. Back in school, married, dreaming...can't remember to what extent I discussed it on here, but I was smoking and ingesting so much weed that I wasn't hardly dreaming anymore. Now I dream every night, practically, as once I did in the days of my vibrant, suffering youth. Man, when I was a teenager, I had like four nightmares a week at least. How did I survive?

At any rate, I am a new man, and a new man cleans out his closet, and pays close, careful attention to his dreams. This one does, anyhow.

*

At my parent's house right now, watching the family dog while they get in a bit of a travel for their anniversary. This post has been interrupted twice on two separate days, so even though I find it most wanting, we shall part ways for the moment here, dear reader, and try to have a better post next time.

Be well. Keep your secrets and your safety and rise one day triumphant and eternal.

--JL

#319

Looks like I was being a jerk yesterday. Guess I was cranky. Guess when I'm cranky, maybe I pick on an illustrated image I generated myself of a technically disadvantaged-type dude. Today I get to feel guilty. Today I ask in all seriousness, without venom, who cares about not being able to do push-ups? Who gives a fuck about pants. What the fuck do pants, or how a person smells, have to do with their innate worth and infinite spiritual potential? Do their opinions and their affect as a subculture or stereotype mean that they deserve my snide excoriation? 

No. Not at all, dammit! The best thing that can be said about my outburst may be that it was fundamentally born out of frustration at my inability to help this kind of person, but that's not my job, or my problem, so what the fuck, man. Really stupid stuff. Gotta be better than this.

*

Anyway. Fucking hell. Let's talk about books. I'll finish The Wars of the Roses today or tomorrow, and then I'll kill three birds with one swift and terrible stone by reading the textbook for my current poetry class cover to cover, thereby preparing like gangbusters for that class, fulfilling the "poetry" checkmark on my "next book in planned alternating sequence", and also still pretty much reading a nonfiction book, what with all the hard data and background and terminology and other crap that fills textbooks so dang full.

That reminds me to mention I have been reading psychology textbooks and humanities textbooks, which means, when it comes to the latter, a bunch of stuff about art and history and culture and anthropology and law and economics and also like The Epic of Gilgamesh (but a condensed, prose form, for economy's sake--not very satisfying but still good) so that's nothing but rad. 

Makes me happy as a pig in shit, to tell the truth. I decided to take only classes that would please me greatly if I properly apply myself, which is decidedly my firm intent, and so far it's paying off. Those classes have been a lot of fun to be in and do work for, even though it's a lot to deal while working and keeping a house together with and it's only ever going to get more intensive. I am prepared, though, in body and brain. Feeling strong. Getting back into the swing of the endeavor and determined to, for once in my WRETCHED ARC, excel without getting a complex about it and throwing my life in the garbage.

*

Listened to all of Mega Drive's discography a bunch. It was so fucking awesome to do that, damn that's good music. The synthwave revival fellates my soul with such pleasure it should be illegal. This music ought to be a controlled substance.  Also the newest album from the band Alvvays is very good. Listened to it because John Alison, the former Scary-Go-Round (currently, Solver and Giant Days and maybe a few other things; formerly, many many comics including Bobbins and Bad Machinery) man and great delighter of my eyeballs as far as comics go for the past twenty years, put up a list of albums of the year, which he does most years (I don't always see it, as sometimes I have been off the grid or distracted or whatever), thereby delighting my ears as well. Before that, a bunch of Bleach soundtrack music, made by Shirō SAGISU, finally got put on iTunes, and I was listening to it a lot. Before that, the Andor soundtrack, which is a magnificent achievement both on its own and in the context of a Star Wars endeavor. Before that a couple of playlists I tinkered with for weeks, full of all manner of music new to my rotation and reliable classics. Before that, a massive playlist containing all my favorite blues, funk, soul, and low dirty honkytonk jazz music, which was all I wanted to listen to for weeks, only occasionally breaking form to check out A Hawk and a Handsaw or Vetiver or listen to some Mogwai albums. I'm listening to Lazerhawk's Skull Shark as I type all this.

*

Wow! Who cares about any of that shit! Maybe sometime soon, by the grace of the Almighty, I might come up with a thing or two that is actually of use to anyone. Tell a story. Have a thought. Something. Anything that isn't me just blathering about the things I like, even though, of course, people like that sort of thing. Me too, when someone else is doing it. Doing it myself, it's some weird completionist compulsion; I look up and there's just this ridiculous wall of text describing what a fucking loser I am.

--JL

#318

Greetings, bloglings! 

That's how I would start my post, if I wore long jean shorts and no other pants ever. In this scenario, I can't really do a push-up. While prone, I can raise my head and shoulders with my arms, and kind of be on my toes so my knees lift slightly, but the middle part of my body won't leave the ground no matter how I exert myself before giving up. Does this bother me? No. I have so much Reddit Gold, or whatever the fuck. Who cares if I smell like a farted-in slice of pizza dug out from between the basement couch cushions? I can push my glasses up the bridge of my nose as I flash my most superior smile. I have more opinions, better opinions, than you even know about stuff to have opinions on.

*

Today, as you can see, has started with some good old-fashioned baseless and unnecessary mean bullcrap. Why? Because it is the first week of school, I've been extremely nice and engaging to a lot of new people, and there's a killer inside of me. He needs blood, if only conceptually, if only the blood of purely imaginary victims. Living my best life and giving the best of myself to everyone I meet fucking infuriates this guy. It twists his fingers into claws.

We've discussed this sort of thing before, I believe, here on the blog. I behave, I act, I manifest the best of myself, my virtues polished and arrayed in a noble phalanx. Behind those gleaming armaments, those mirrored shields, is a regular person, and therefore, in my mind and in my soul, I can be a total prick. Before anyone gets to hear what comes out of my mouth, usually my brain has supplied me with something cutting, usually lightly, sometimes ferociously. It's just what happens. Rather than deploy this artillery at the world, I turn it at strawmen, or myself, or myself holding a strawman. Maybe the strawman gets it first, and then, in guilt, I get myself even worse. Is that what's happening now? Yes, unfolding on the screen, and even worse in my mind. 

How do I stop this? Death will free me from cognition. Probably.

* 

Anyway, school's pretty good so far. Still driving the bus in the mornings. Gotta go wash the dishes and read a chapter of something now. 

Hope you've enjoyed whatever this was. Not even sure. That was some rather febrile typing back there.

--JL

#317

This is one of those posts written on the cusp of something, a border post, overlooking uncharted lands. Often, these posts are the final post before the blank, terrifying void of a hiatus, but pray with me, dear reader: this cusp is different. This cusp, this cusp right here? This is the cusp of heretofore unprecedented productivity, the cusp of rich, thick, ambrosial bounty.

When it was time for me, as a newly minted adult, to attend a four-year college, well, I didn't feel like doing that. What I wanted to do was ingest a bunch of drugs, drink till I went fucking blind, and smoke enough cigarettes to sound like Tom Waits. Wanted to work and earn only enough to pay a small rent and support my habits, at a restaurant or other food place so that I could mostly eat for free, and write. Also, play music on my bass guitar.

Also, die. This last wish went unexpressed, but was really the head of the pack. Funny how psychology works.

Over ten years and many adventures later, it is time to concede and accept that I did not die, and that the many reasons I gave and feelings I felt that prevented me from continuing my education and taking up a post in society that befits a whole and balanced individual were fabricated from that tempestuous mix of bloated arrogance, particular traumas, and corrosive self-hate that defined my tender youth. However, life has worked upon me, and I am a different man, a man that has been to the brink, back to the beginning, and ready for a new adventure. So on Monday, I go back to school, at the community college, and later, when I am done, I will secure work as a teacher. My feeling is that my experiences and skillsets will serve me very well in this endeavor, to which I feel unmistakably called.

Indeed, having withstood what I have withstood, and dealt with what I have dealt with, the idea of being derailed in my academic endeavors by what once derailed me is laughable. Once, I stopped attending a class because the teacher didn't deal with a student in a way I felt the situation called for. This other student stole about twenty minutes of class time from the rest of us because she could not see, and had to be informed, how understanding Nietzsche was supposed to help her with her business degree*. She hijacked the class, coarsely and witlessly, I might add, which incensed me greatly. After the allotted time had passed, I wanted to talk to the teacher about why that had been allowed. The man fled from me, literally, avoiding my eye, brushing past me, and exiting the building at such a rapid clip that I would have had to jog to catch up. Before this, I had liked and respected this teacher enough to have quite a bit of enthusiasm for his class. 

That's it. No more. An autodidact is all that I can be. It's all that I ought to be. I will not be taught by that kind of coward, I told myself, and left school; forever, I thought. 

Don't get me wrong; I love and live for being an autodidact. My only reservation about this process as I embark upon it is a reduction in the time I will have to pursue my own academic interest wholly unencumbered by outside demands from an actual academy. But on the balance, I believe it will only serve me to double my demands. No longer do I fear I lack the bandwidth to pursue my own interests and others at the same time. My time in the service industry and other brute workforces has taught me otherwise. Disengaging myself from various social and material pressures unique to the young and drug-addled has also broadened my perspectives tremendously.

For example, I have come to understand various hows and whys as related to that teacher allowing that sincerely idiotic individual to do as she did, and his subsequent ignominious behavior. It's not how I hope to comport myself if similarly tested, but yeah, I get it. We all have rights, and boundaries, and rights to our boundaries, and this creates untenable situations sometimes. So it goes.

Guess another basic worry is money and will we have enough, but that's never bothered me too much. This attitude, I believe, has kept me relatively unwrinkled and spry in the step, albeit light in the wallet, so I shall continue with this policy and hope it continues to serve me in more or less tolerable stead.

--JL

*this avenue of inquiry still repulses me viscerally. Fuck you, lady. Fuck you and may you have failed yourself utterly.

#316

Perhaps it is to become a tradition, or at any rate, a yearly condition of this blog that I will fall off posting around November through to January. Anyway, it happened, for no real reason other than that it did. Also, it is very cold in my bookroom/writing office, as it is basically a converted attic space, lacking ventilation and not amply insulated. At any rate, we forge onwards. Brave 2023, we greet ye!

*

Largely, I hewed to my word concerning my reading plans--plans whose layout and execution are doubtless the main reason anyone reads this blog. Completed Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman, as planned, and read 1Q84 and First Person Singular, as planned, but could not bring myself to let it rest there and subsequently acquired and read Men Without Women, Colorless Tsuruku Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage, (at this point there was a brief pause on the Murakami and I read Shigeru Mizuki's Tono Monogatari while waiting for more books to come in the mail) and Sputnik Sweetheart. Also acquired A Wild Sheep Chase and Dance Dance Dance, but have not read those yet, nor reread Ulysses.

Primarily this shortcoming is due to the glut of video games I downed in the months of November and December, as well as a great cacophony of films and television programs. Watched Sopranos for like, what, the ninth time? Also, The Many Saints of Newark, for the second time. Exhaustive detailing is more work than with books, which is part of why I talk about it less, but here is merely a sampling of the rest of the backlog: Boardwalk Empire, The Irishman, Strange World, Amsterdam (if I gave Moving Picture Awards, like some asshole Academy, this would be my best picture for this year, I think, though it's not easy to be definitive about this, given human limitations on time and attention, and also, Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery would certainly be a contender as well), Guillermo del Toro's Cabinet of Curiosities, American Splendor, and a whole bunch more. All kindsa stuff.

Videogames, though. Notably, Pokémon Violet/Scarlet versions dropped, and I sank thirty hours into the former in a single intensive weekend. I beat it and completed its Pokédex in record time, a very enjoyable endeavor. Also picked up Sonic Frontiers (probably the best Sonic game made in about twenty years, as far as I'm concerned), Super Mario Odyssey, NieR: Automata - The End of YoRHa Edition, Pokémon Shining Pearl, Death's Door, Disgaea 5, Cuphead, and Fire Emblem: Three Houses. I played all of these and more to varying degrees, eating up a lot of time I might have reasonably devoted to reading and writing, but it was fucking great and I regret nothing, a life practice I recommend to everyone, applying to everything they do. 

Remorse and regret are different things, by the way. Remorse is fine. Not that I feel any over playing video games. Remorse is reserved for hurting people, indecencies, so forth.

Remorse is a natural and noble reaction to a past made up of imperfect choices, a side effect of our paltry, laughable consciousness. Regret is an affront to God's perfect universe, a seductive trap that keeps us enmeshed in samsara's gravid loop.

Something to consider for the new year.

*

So! Today I set out on this year's literary journey with Alison Weir's The Wars of the Roses. Thought it best to finish all the Murakami after I complete my planned task for 2023, and then, in that distant future, we will see what comes next. Pretty great so far; it really does read like Game of Thrones! Life is so wild.

Feels good to be back in the nonfiction section. Gonna read the shit out of my books this year, dear reader, all my nonfiction and poetry and comics, and I'm gonna tell you all about it. Might have to hit the library or secure more poetry and comics in order to properly alternate between them and my nonfiction, but that'll just be even more fun. Plus, we'll see what else happens. A whole blank slate to piss and shit all over! Ahh, the illusory yet very real grace of elliptical orbits.

--JL